217 Babel Street | Apartment 15
The television was a small black and white affair, very old and very cheap. Julietta had bought it from a second-hand store. At first it had seemed a real bargain, with a good picture and clear sound. But slowly, over the next few months, the machine had started to play up. Sometimes it would change channels of its own accord, or pick up radio messages from the taxi cabs that passed by along the coast road. When this happened, she liked to stand at her window and look down at the seafront and watch the cabs as they drove along, thinking of lost destinations, of roads not taken, people she had left at the wayside and so on. Her husband, Alan, for instance. All gone now, all gone.
The sea stirred in darkness, in lines of white foam beyond the road, beyond the beach area.
Sometimes the television screen turned a speckled grey and picked up conversations, people talking to each other as clear as daylight. This was Julietta's favourite; she could sit for hours lulled by the dancing grey flecks and listening to the strangers talk, wondering if they lived in the same apartment block as her, or whether they lived miles away; or whether they were ghosts, lost souls in the ether.